“Farm in Normandy”
“Farm in Normandy” is a lovely oil on canvas painting made by the French artist, Berthe Morisot in 1859. Morisot was a prominent member of the Impressionist art movement that swept through France. Both Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt are generally regarded as the most important female artists of the late nineteenth century.
Morisot painted this piece when she was 18 years old and just one year after starting her formal art training. Both Berthe and her older sister, Edma, had desired to become artists early on in life. Their upper middle-class family readily supported them both.
In 1857, the Morisot sisters began their formal art training under Joseph Guichard who operated a school for girls in Paris. He brought them to the Louvre where they practiced their skills by copying the masters. In the early 1860s, she was introduced to Camille Corot, a Barbizon artist, who introduced her to painting in plein air.
The style of this painting is more in line with the Barbizon school of art which focused on realism in art, usually through landscapes. It was made years before the Impressionist art movement coalesced into a formal movement.
“Farm in Normandy” is currently in a private collection.
For more on Berthe Morisot, please visit her short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
